New in the Literature: Manual and Exercise Therapy for Hip or Knee Osteoarthritis (Osteoarthritis Cartilage. 2013 Jan 8. [Epub ahead of print])

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

New in the Literature: Manual and Exercise Therapy for Hip or Knee Osteoarthritis (Osteoarthritis Cartilage. 2013 Jan 8. [Epub ahead of print])

Manual physical therapy provided
benefits over usual care that were sustained to 1 year for patients with
osteoarthritis of the hip or knee, say authors of an article published online
in Osteoarthritis and Cartilage. Exercise
physical therapy also provided physical performance benefits over usual care.
There was no added benefit from a combination of the 2 therapies.

In this 2x2 factorial randomized
controlled trial conducted in New Zealand, 206 adults (mean age 66 years) who
met the American College of Rheumatology criteria for hip or knee
osteoarthritis were allocated to receive manual physical therapy (n=54),
multimodal exercise physical therapy (n=51), combined exercise and manual
physical therapy (n=50), or no trial physical therapy (n=51). The primary
outcome was change in the Western Ontario and McMaster osteoarthritis index
(WOMAC) after 1 year. Secondary outcomes included physical performance tests.
Outcome assessors were blinded to group allocation.